In the Outcast recap for the series premiere, Kyle Barnes fights against a dark force that’s been haunting him for many years….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Before Robert Kirkman — best known as the creator of The Walking Dead — ever released an issue of his comic book titled Outcast, the story had already been optioned as a TV series on Cinemax.
It was an interesting move for any number of reasons, but obviously Cinemax knew what Kirkman’s potential was in another series not to mention, the ultra-violent and ultra-graphic storytelling that was required to make Outcast as genuine as the source material would undoubtedly require a service with far fewer censors than say AMC.
I’ll be the first to admit when The Walking Dead was first optioned for basic cable, I never thought it would work. Part of what made Kirkman’s comic book so amazing was how there were never any punches pulled and everything from the subject matter to the language was definitely built for a network like HBO or Showtime.
Still, kudos to the writers and producers behind The Walking Dead because they’ve pulled it off and the show has been a huge critical hit and remains one of the best shows on television from season to season.
But now with Outcast, Kirkman no longer has those same restrictions and if the first episode was any indication, things are going to get bloody in a hurry on this series set in the world of demonic possession and religious exorcism.
With that said, let’s recap the premiere episode of Outcast titled “A Darkness Surrounds Him”…
All Alone
When we first meet Kyle Barnes he’s waking up in a dingy, barely functioning house that looks more like an abandoned structure that’s about to be torn down than somewhere a person might live. Kyle has been back in his hometown of Rome, West Virginia for about five months after a tragedy struck close to home and he was forced to leave his wife and his daughter behind. More on that later.
Kyle is woken up by his adopted sister Megan, who is determined to get her brother out of his lonely funk and become a functioning member of society again. Or at the very least she’s going to feed him food so he’ll have solid poop again.
Megan feels indebted to her brother for saving her life, although what he did to save her is still unclear, but she feels a responsibility to help him re-enter the world no matter how much Kyle is drawn away from it.
She takes him to a local grocery store where Kyle tries to duck his head and stay out of the line of sight of anybody who might recognize him, but eventually the local pastor’s secretary sees him and decides to have a conversation. She informs Kyle that “a dark force” has come back to Rome and poisoned the mind of a little boy named Joshua. She then says that Joshua is exhibiting some of the same signs that Kyle’s mother once showed before she was removed from her son’s life.
To dig into Kyle’s past is to see through a haze of foggy memories from his damaged and broken childhood.
From the brief flashbacks shown throughout the episode, Kyle’s mother was possessed and she abused him over the years — most routinely tossing him into a locked closet where he was be forced to stay for hours upon hours at a time. Eventually, Kyle fought back and his mother is now committed to a care facility where she lays in a bed in a catatonic state — the same place she’s been ever since her son exorcised the demon from inside her.
Sadly, the demons that haunted Kyle’s mother eventually followed him to his marriage where they ended up inhabiting his wife Allison, who then in turn went after their daughter. Kyle was forced to attack his own wife in order to exact the demon that possessed her but in the process of saving her life, he was himself accused of wrong doing and exorcised from his family’s life.
So from that happy, mid-America existence, Kyle came home to West Virginia because he had nowhere else to go.
A Boy In Need
The episode actually started with our first image of little Joshua Austin as he stared at a roach on his wall before smashing it with his forehead a few seconds later. Joshua ends up eating the insect before scaring the living hell out of his mother by then gnawing on his own finger.
When the local pastor Reverend Anderson is called into check on the boy, he finds a child afflicted with a sickness that can only be explained in one way — he’s been possessed by a demon.
The boy scratches at his skin like there’s an internal itch that won’t go away and he taunts the reverend and even breaks his mother’s nose when the two of them attempt to detain him with religious articles like a cross or holy water. No matter how much chanting the pastor does, Joshua only worsens and the demon inside of him takes an even deeper hold.
He Wants to Help
It’s clear that Kyle’s relationship with his extended family is strenuous at best. While his sister Megan wants nothing more than to re-integrate her brother into the world, her husband Mark and even her daughter look at him with real disdain. Mark looks at Kyle with disgust and when his daughter asks Kyle why he was mean to the point where he no longer gets to be daddy to his own child, he’s had enough. Kyle bolts for the door and climbs back into the internal cave where he’s been living for the last five months.
But something is still eating away at Kyle and it’s not the demons that have been haunting him since he was a child.
It’s hearing about that little boy named Joshua, who reportedly has some kind of creature living inside of him and that’s enough for Kyle to finally intervene.
When he shows up at the Austin residence, he tries to feign as if he’s just there to check on the kid but Reverend Anderson — the one person who greets Kyle with a smile instead of a scowl — knows he’s really there to help. Once they get upstairs, Kyle realizes that the thing living inside this little boy is the same one that’s haunted him for years.
Joshua begins taunting Kyle with memories from his past — including that pantry he used to get locked in as a child. Once Kyle hears what is coming out of the boys’ mouth, he knows that whatever once possessed his mother has now moved onto a new host.
Kyle is forced to withdraw from the room after everything he hears and when he retires back home, he actually sits and has dinner with a neighbor, who loaned him a car so he could go check on the Austin boy in the first place. It’s there where we find out that friends and neighbors knew there were awful things happening inside the Barnes’ home but they did nothing to stop it and to this day some of them — or at least in this case his neighbor Norville — still feel awful about it.
The Great Merge
The next day, Kyle meets with Reverend Anderson and decides that he can no longer sit idly by while this demon continues to tear apart people around him. He saw what it did to his mother and to his wife and he’ll be damned if it’s going to claim this little boy.
Kyle’s already living in his own personal hell because of this demon. He can’t be a father to his daughter and when he attempts to call his ex-wife Allison, he can’t even muster the words to say anything to her. So Kyle is going to do everything he can to save Joshua because the least he can do is give this little boy’s life back to him — or maybe Kyle’s motivation is self-serving and he wants to find out what exactly this demon wants from him.
Inside the room this time, Kyle remembers what he did to finally exact the creature from his mother. It included heavy doses of sunlight and a vicious flurry of fists from Kyle delivered to the little boy. With each punch, the demon seemed weakened but it still seemed determined to draw something out of Kyle. Several times when the demon gained the upper hand, it drew some sort of substance out of Kyle via his mouth — and obviously we don’t know what that is just yet. The demon continues to taunt Kyle and even says that no matter what he does, he won’t be able to stop “the great merge” — whatever that is.
Finally, after Joshua bites Kyle he realizes one last thing that happened to his mother that hasn’t happened to the little boy just yet. He squeezes some of his own blood into Joshua’s mouth and moments later a huge stream of black goop comes spewing out of the boy’s mouth, onto the ceiling. The substance then flies into the air and explodes into nothingness like dandelion spores blowing away in the wind.
A moment later, Joshua wakes up and begins crying as if he just woke up from a nightmare he’s been trapped in for days. Outside when the police arrive, they are ready to lock Kyle up for abusing the little boy — and his brother in law Mark is more than happy to tighten the handcuffs wrapped around his wrists.
A few minutes later, Chief Giles comes over and releases Kyle from holding, despite a very loud objection from his officers. The mother refuses to press charges because she knows Kyle saved her son’s life. Reverend Anderson clearly stood up for Kyle as well and as he drives him home, he asks him if he got the answers he had been looking for.
It’s clear Kyle found no resolution that night but he now knows for a fact that wherever he goes, this demon is going to follow. So as he looks up at the sky, Kyle mutters in a quiet breath — “come and get me” and we are officially off and running!
Are you on board with the newest series from Robert Kirkman and company?
Outcast airs Friday nights at 10pm ET on Cinemax.
